My will : a legacy to the healthy and the sick / by Sebastian Kneipp.

  • Sebastian Kneipp
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: My will : a legacy to the healthy and the sick / by Sebastian Kneipp. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    Patients are often warned against applications of water and shudder when a full bath is prescribed; they are less afraid of a half-bath, especially if it is to be of short duration. I do not fight against this prejudice and recommend very generally a half bath by which the upper part of the body is kept dry or only gently splashed with water. In this way I please the patients and obtain good results. The half-bath reaches up to the chest. One goes quietly into the water either standing kneeling or sitting as circumstances require. Formerly as stated in My Water Cure I ordered it to be taken from one and a half to three minutes, now I never permit it longer than from two to six seconds. My reason for shortening the time is that patients taking the half-bath have as a rule two other water applica- tions in the day, beside wading in water. Using the half-bath beyond the time ordered takes so much warmth from the body that it is difficult to reinstate it and hinders further applications such as going- bare foot and wading in water, which are not only use- ful in drawing off superfluous heat ])ut in bracing and strengthening the body. The results of the half-bath are excellent; it braces and strengthens the body, develops heat, has a greater influence on the circulation of the blood than any othe'r application, and helps greatly to convalescence after severe illness. Notwithstanding all that books on water-cure say about the length of time the bath is to be taken fixing it for minutes and even for half an hour, I say, from long experience, that the shorter the time the bet- ter; and that it is wiser to take two short baths than one long one. The normal warmth remains during the short bath, the result is good and energetic, the patient likes it better and warmth is more quickly developed, whereas after taking a bath of long duration it is a couple of hours often before proper warmth returns.